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Supplemental update

Paper · 2016 · Scott Martin

Summary

Supplements (nominal appositives, nonrestrictive relative clauses, as-parentheticals) have usually been treated as semantically inert. Potts (2005) places them in a separate meaning dimension that operators cannot reach. Martin collects evidence against that view. Supplements can contain anaphors bound from outside, can introduce antecedents for later pronouns, and can fall under the scope of negation or quantifiers.

He proposes a single-dimension, dynamic, compositional semantics written in type theory. The only new ingredient is a meaning for the comma intonation, which works as a modifier on the anchoring quantifier phrase. It splits an utterance into two dynamically conjoined updates: the quantifier applied to the apposition, then a definite that picks up the referent and feeds it to the main predicate.

On this account, projection is not tied to at-issueness. Whether a supplement projects follows from its anchor's scope, from surface-scope preferences and from anaphoric accessibility. When a supplement takes widest scope, it becomes a separate proposal, which explains its deniability. The paper shows that supplements can be modelled with general mechanisms rather than special layers.

Key points

  • Published in Semantics and Pragmatics, vol. 9, article 5 (61 pages). The work is formalized in dynamic type theory, following Muskens, de Groote, and Martin & Pollard.
  • The comma meaning is roughly comma = λQDE.(Q D) and (the D E). For example, "Some cyclist, a doper, won the Tour" becomes "some cyclist is a doper" followed by "the doper won".
  • Theorem A.2 shows that unembedded dynamic conjunction is equivalent to parataxis. This is why widest-scope supplements behave like separate proposals ("supplemental updates").
  • Narrow-scope cases (Amaral, Roberts & Smith 2007; Nouwen 2014) are handled without any additional rules, for instance the example in which each boxer is said to have a coach who is famous. The author also offers new data in which quantified supplements are read outside their anchor's scope, and treats these as Roberts's telescoping.
  • Supplements at the end of an utterance are easier to deny, because the proposals are ordered by linear position. Pronoun resolution needs only consistency with the context (pro), while definites and names require entailment (the).

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Treat an appositive as a separate ordered update: first assert that the anchor has the apposition property, then resolve a definite back to it for the main clause.
  • I2. Projection is not a lexical property but falls out of the anchor's scope: names and definites take wide scope, and quantifiers prefer surface scope.
  • I3. Pronouns need only consistency with an antecedent, while definite descriptions need the context to entail the description.
  • I4. Content that comes later in an utterance is more open to denial, because proposals are ordered by linear position.
  • I5. A universal quantifier closes off the referents it introduces, through its outer negation. This gives a clean accessibility rule for later anaphora.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (frames): When the parser finds an appos or nonrestrictive acl:relcl, prag could emit a separate frame/proposition linked by coreference, instead of attaching it as a modifier.
  • I2 (world): The world builder could decide whether appositive content survives negation or quantification by checking the anchor's determiner type, rather than always asserting it.
  • I3 (frames): Coreference could use two filters, a weak compatibility check for pronouns and a strict "known to have property" check for definite NPs.
  • I4 (answer): When a QA reader or dialogue meets a "No, …" rebuttal, it could first attach the denial to the last proposal (often an utterance-final supplement).
  • I5 (world): Entities introduced under "every" or "no" could be marked inaccessible by default, which would block wrong pronoun links in the text world.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🏢Nuance CommunicationsBurlington · United States3 works · 142 citations

📚 Shelves 5The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Computer Science · 9,086 worksArtificial Intelligence · 8,889 worksArts and Humanities · 9,296 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 9,206 worksPhilosophy · 211 works

Cite

Cite as Scott Martin. 2016. Supplemental update. Semantics and Pragmatics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.3765/sp.9.5

@article{martin2016supplemental,
  title = {{Supplemental update}},
  author = {Scott Martin},
  journal = {Semantics and Pragmatics},
  year = {2016},
  doi = {10.3765/sp.9.5},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.9.5}
}

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